A Walk from London to John O'Groat's eBook

Agriculture in England has to run the gauntlet of
many pressing competitions, and carry a heavy burden
of taxation as it runs. These will be noticed,
hereafter, in their proper connection. Farming,
therefore, is being reduced to a rigid science.
Every acre of land must be put up to its last ounce
of production. Every square foot of it must
be utilised to the growth of something for man and
beast. Manures for different soils are tested
with as much chemical precision as ever was quinine
for human constitutions. Dynameters are applied
to prove the power of working machinery. Labor
is scrutinised and economised, and measured closely
up to the value of a farthing’s-worth of capacity.
A shilling’s difference per acre in the cost
of ploughing by horse-flesh or steam brings the latter
into the field. The sound of the flail is dying
out of the land, and soon will be heard no more.
Even threshing machines worked by horses are being
discarded, as too slow and old-fashioned. Locomotive
steam-engines, on broad-rimmed wheels, may be met on
the turnpike road, travelling on their own legs from
farm to farm to thresh out wheat, barley, oats, and
beans, for a few pence per bushel. They make
nothing of ascending a hill without help, or of walking
across a ploughed field to a rick-yard. Iron
post and rail fencing, in lengths of twenty feet on
wheels, drawn about by a donkey, bids fair to supersede
the old wooden hurdles for sheep fed on turnips or
clover. It is an iron age, and wire fencing is
creeping into use, especially in the most scientifically
cultivated districts of Scotland, where the elements
and issues of the farmer’s balance-sheet are
looked to with the most eager concern. Iron wire
grows faster than hawthorn or buckthorn. It doubtless
costs less. It needs no yearly trimming, like
shrubs with sap and leaves. It does not occupy
a furrow’s width as a boundary between two fields.
It may be easily transposed to vary enclosures.
It is not a nesting place for destructive birds or
vermin. These and other arguments, of the same
utilitarian genus, are making perceptible headway.
Will they ever carry the day against the green hedges?
I think they would, very soon, if the English farmer
owned the land he cultivates. But such is rarely
the case. Still, this fact may not prevent the
final consummation of this policy of material interest.
In a great many instances, the tenant might compromise
with the landlord in such a way as to bring about
this “modern improvement.” And a
comparatively few instances, showing a certain per
centage of increased production per acre to the former,
and a little additional rentage to the latter, would
suffice to give the innovation an impulse that would
sweep away half the hedges of the country, and deface
that picture which so many generations have loved to
such enthusiasm of admiration.